In GitHub issue tracker, can non-admin users assign users and labels?

Question

I think the answer is no, but maybe I'm missing something: in most repos, you only have one or two admins, and a bunch of "collaborators". But it looks like the collaborators can't assign issues (eg, to themselves), nor can they label issues (even ones they created).

Bug? Design feature? I'm using it wrong? Are there any workarounds?

Answer 1

Looking at Issues 2.0: The Next Generation, this seems to be by design, and from the comments, this isn't the only "problem" users are facing:

It looks like issues can only be assigned to collaborators.
I'd still like to be able to assign an issue (or someone to claim one) to a developer who is not a repo collaborator. After all it is a very common workflow that collaboration happens with forks and pull requests.

One potential workaround (not tested myself) is for a user to fork the original repo, and reproduce the issue in the issue tracker of that new forked repo (that he owns):

• the new issue would keep an html link to the original issue of the original repo
• the user can assign and label issues.

Obviously that involves a bit of duplication, but for bugs a user wants complete ownership of, that can be worth doing.